


soft like licorice

by eggwriter



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Abstract Gay Buildup, Aftermath, Bonding, Carlton survives, I think., M/M, Not Really A Redemption Fic Just Chilling With The Villain, Other, forced roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 09:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggwriter/pseuds/eggwriter
Summary: Carlton survives and takes shelter in the last place where people would look.





	soft like licorice

**Author's Note:**

> i'll be real with you guys i've no idea what i'm doing. i just wanted to write a """realistic""" fic abt carlton/eddie and that little black monster that didn't end in violence or abuse. so have them being regretful roommates and bonding over having been in a symbiotic relationship?

The entirety of San Francisco sees Carlton Drake’s rocket launch into the air and then explode in an overdramatic ending of his career.

From what Eddie hears, Drake and Riot were both lost – either evaporated in the heat from the explosion or maybe falling into the ocean and dying from the fall or drowning. Neither of the bodies had been recovered, not even a trace had been found. Drake’s body was probably somewhere at sea, and Riot had with all likelihood been mistaken for a giant sea cucumber and devoured.

 **_I don’t miss him_** **,** Venom said when Eddie pointed out that the symbiote felt almost remorse. Venom refused to say anything further, and Eddie didn’t know how to communicate to an alien that it’s fine to feel weird about a close acquaintance (or whatever he was) dying. Even if they were an asshole.

Drake was declared missing and most of his company was cut up, sold and sued, all as quietly as possible because the Life Foundation desperately tried to hang onto whatever reputation it had left. Eddie followed the story in the newspapers for a few days before the enjoyment of reading about rich people getting sacked got too repetitive.

The least expected changes to his every day routine were actually getting journalist work done, and then the not-so-rare occasions of stalking criminals in the middle of the night. It was a surprisingly welcome change as compared to drinking alone and looking for jobs, even if it was a little frightening how quickly Eddie’s morals had gone out the window.

Within just a few days he was completely used to reading about the car crashes, property destruction, beheading of “ _bad_ ” criminals in the newspaper, things he and Venom had directly caused. Still felt weird to see the San Francisco paper talk _about_ them in vague terms of _10 feet tall shape_ and _cannibalistic tendencies_.

“ **Hero work** ”, like Venom had proudly informed after they watched the TV news about tackily dressed heroic New Yorkers saving various people, because in some feat of cosmic irony they had ended up frequently saving a few civilians a night.

“We’re vigilantes at _best_. We’d go to jail in a second if they found out who we were,” Eddie mumbled but the symbiote was already enamored with the idea.

 

0.

Someone knocks on their door at 12:32 AM.

Venom had actually for once been fine with going to bed and hadn’t wanted to spend 3 hours tracking down drug rings and the occasional wannabe supervillain. This meant that when someone knocked at their door at 12:32 AM, Eddie was already in bed and trying to fall asleep with Venom happily curled up by his neck.

“Who–?”

 **_No idea_** , Venom replies before Eddie can finish his question and elbows his way out of bed. **_Who do you think? Mm, maybe dangerous_** **.**

“Don’t sound too excited about it,” whispers Eddie in return and cautiously approaches their door as the knock comes again.

In the dark hallway stands a slim shape in the dark blue light of the evening and entirely alone, end is at once recognized as a very bitter looking Carlton Drake.

Before Eddie can react the symbiote does. Venom leaps out in less than a split second, extending from Eddie’s chest and enveloping him instantly. Carlton for a moment tries to recoil, but they take the miraculously surviving philanthropist in one black hand and grabs him like a toy.

“ **You** ,” Venom snarls and the door gently slams shut behind them, and within the symbiote surges a combination of **_intruderheisinourhome_** and a malicious **_finallyfinallyFINALLY_**.

“Wait, wait–” sputters Drake and Eddie feels his heart hurriedly beat underneath their hand.

“ **You two** **_again_** –”

“It’s just me,” Drake hisses and grasps at the inky hand to purchase some distance. “It’s just me, I came alone _get off of me_ –”

And fact is, as Venom inhales him and feels a single stressed heartbeat, that it is only Drake staring up at them with daring dark eyes and within them there is no trace of Riot.

 

***

There’s no nearby hitsquad or Life Foundation goons either, no people Drake managed to bribe into protecting him, truly _no one_ meaning Carlton actually told the truth. No gun, an almost completely empty wallet and a broken phone. No Riot and no one else, just a man with a god complex sitting on Eddie’s couch and looking rumpled and miserable.

An implication of stubble is adorning Drake’s jawline and his pristine black clothes appear to be in desperate need of ironing. It makes him look less untouchable than the few times Eddie met him, makes him look more human. That still does not withdraw anything from the intenseness of his dark eyes as he stares up at Eddie defiantly.

“Why are you here? _How_ are you here?” Eddie finally asks and feels the symbiote extend from the back of his neck to stare as Drake as well and bare teeth.

“Warm welcome, Brock,” responds Drake and something annoyed frays at his usually so soft and controlled tone. “I’ve been looking for you for two days.”

“ **Riot** ,” states rather asks Venom and Drake quickly glances at the symbiote.

“Don’t know. Alive enough to heal me and then disappear into the Pacific.”

A cold lump of concern forms at the back of Eddie’s head at the thought of another symbiote possibly being on Earth, but he ignores it for now. Dealing with the villain on his couch is for now – dealing with an alien parasite possessing great white sharks is for later.

“So why the hell did you come here?” Eddie asks with his brows low, and something completely joyless plays in the corners of Carlton’s lips.

“Half the city and its lawyers are looking for me and I need a place to stay,” Carlton says simply and Eddie gives a loud snort of a laugh.

“You fuckin’ kidding me?”

“You weren’t exactly my first choice.”

“I’d sure hope not! You tried to drag us into space!” Eddie says and wildly gestures, grinning at the absurdity of the situation because there’s no other way to react to this. Drake’s jaw tightens in immense displeasure that he is being laughed at.

“It’s only for a few days,” Carlton explains and is clear as day trying to keep calm, “and then I have a few people coming to pick me up.”

“Yeah? You wanna bum my couch while you wait for your thugs to come fetch you? Wait ‘til I fall asleep and slit my throat and take my life savings – honestly you could use all the money you can get with the lawsuits Life is facing,” continues Eddie and tries not to wheeze in laughter because the situation is so fucking _stupid_ and Drake looks _furious_.

“How do you make everything you say so diminutive?”

“Oh fuck off. Is there any reason I should let you stay here?”

 

“I’m the only one who knows how it feels,” snaps Carlton and Eddie freezes still because he knows exactly what Carlton means.

 

The feeling of Venom, of someone else in his head – it was good, but so goddamn _weird_. It felt weird to never be alone, and to never _want_ to be truly alone. They were never separate, when he wanted privacy Venom withdrew into the depths of his parenchyma and brainstem, and they’d think on their lonesome for an hour or two.

To be completely alone, to never have anyone with him again? The thought made Eddie run cold.

 **_Must be lonely_** , Venom said in a sudden unexpected bout of caring, and Eddie wrestled down whatever shared sympathy they had for the crooked philanthropist.

“My empathy don’t go that deep,” Eddie mutters instead and Carlton’s eyes narrow gently. “You just _imagine_ I’ll let you stay for the reason we both briefly got possessed by aliens?”

“What about for money?” Carlton asks and his soft tone implies that money is some petty materialistic thing he doesn’t care about - might fully well be the case, Eddie thinks bitterly. Everything about Drake’s public presence throughout the years implies he takes great pride in being humble, in giving money to good environmental causes, while being completely ready to murder innocent people to get what he wants. In eight years of recorded interviews with Carlton Drake he had never mentioned Tony Stark once by name, only implied him and let the audience fill in the blanks.

“Eddie,” says Carlton softly when Eddie doesn’t respond fast enough. It’s the first time he’s called Eddie anything but _Mr Brock_ , and Eddie instantly decides he doesn’t like how his name sounds in Drake’s mouth.

“Four days,” Carlton continues and he sounds a little more pleading now. “Four days. four thousand dollars, wired or in cash. Unless your yearly income has had a dramatic increase the last few months I think that’s a steep sum. And then you’ll never see me again.”

 

1.

 _Four thousand dollars_ , Eddie thinks to himself as he wakes up in the morning after a very sleepless night. Four thousand. 4 k. That’s what makes it all worth it, he _really_ needs that money.

But then his doubt kicks in and the fact that he is housing one of the currently most written about criminal and the second richest man he’s ever met. _Sheltering_ the second richest man he’s ever met for almost a week, it’s incredibly bizarre.

Equally bizarre is when Eddie leaves his bedroom, wearing just sweatpants and a hoodie, in the morning and sees Carlton sitting just where he left him, knees pulled up to his chest and arms wrapped around himself in a neat little bundle. Up until seeing Drake sitting in his couch, Eddie had started to doubt if yesterday evening’s events really took place.

 **_Wet cat_** , Venom purred and Eddie scoffs at the apt description. There was a mutual trust and distrust going on between the two of them and their new roommate, and astonishingly enough, Eddie and Venom had the upper hand.

 **_Obviously_** , Venom responded to his thoughts. **_He is one and we are we._ **

“I don’t think I could’ve gone soundly to sleep if I was in his situation, man,” Eddie whispers. “Like fall asleep while a guy I tried to kill just a week ago is in the house? _And_ a symbiotic alien is also in the same house?”

**_If he tries to separate us, let’s eat him._ **

“I thought we talked about this.”

***

Drake ranks in as the second worst roommate Eddie has ever had – his presence is looming and quiet, ranking him a couple of miles above Eddie’s old college roommates who were some of the loudest people he had ever encountered.

“Please, let me be no hindrance,” was the first thing Carlton said to him in the morning. No _hello_ , no inquiring about breakfast and nothing. As peaceful as his presence was in the house, it was still too unnerving for Eddie to _get this fucking article done_ when someone else was in the goddamn house.

It was actually a relief when, 42 minutes of unproductivity later, Carlton startled the shit out of him by calling out from the bedroom,

“I’m surprised at the collection of books you have here.”

Eddie and Venom both process this statement for a moment, but it is Venom who unfurls and calls back,

“ **Are you saying we’re illiterate?!** ”

“Please stop presuming my every comment has malicious intent,” Carlton calls back and Eddie wonders why the man talks like an elf. “It’s a compliment.”

“Do you know how compliments sound?” Eddie responds and scoffs. If a rich asshole who seems to type to call himself attracted to intellect says his personal library is surprising, then he’s _gotta_ be doing something right.

 

By the end of the day, Eddie has gotten about 591 words of a column that is meant to be 400 words, and Carlton has gotten himself completely lost in one of the longest sci-fi novels that Eddie owns.

 

 **_What does he eat?_ ** Venom asks. **_Weird creature. Big eyes. Maybe doesn’t need to eat_ ** it responds to itself and Eddie realizes it’s right. They haven’t seen Drake eat, haven’t seen him in the kitchen and he hasn’t made a single comment about poor hospitality. At the very least the man hasn’t eaten in 24 hours,

“Hey, Drake,” Eddie shouts from the kitchen-living room amalgam, “what kinda coffee you like?”

“… _what_?” Carlton replies after a pause and Eddie can’t help but give Venom a dumb grin.

“I asked what kind of coffee you want. You look like a black coffee type of guy, but hey, don’t wanna make any presumptions.”

“Yes,” Carlton says after another pause. “No milk, one sugar.”

“Called it,” Eddie whispers to Venom who already has began licking into Eddie’s own coffee, which is a great deal sweeter than he used to take it pre-symbiosis.

When he hands Carlton his coffee (and a little grilled cheese he made for good measure, he isn’t sure if the man avoids pork), Carlton looks up at Eddie with some suspicion before deciding that Eddie and Venom have much faster ways of killing him that don’t involve poison.

***

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Eddie says while brushing his teeth, “what’re you gonna do after this? Like who’s coming to pick you up? Are you gonna redeem yourself, become a new person?”

“Do I look like I’d fit as a civilian?” Drake replies in a slow tone dripping with passive aggression, and Eddie chuckles. If he tries hard enough he can see Drake as a terrifying librarian or extremely unhelpful store clerk. Probably something academical too.

Eddie spits in the sink and rubs his mouth, assesses if his stubble needs any attention or if he can go a few more days before a hobo beard.

“So back to a life of being a supervillain then?” he asks and feels like he can hear Carlton roll his eyes from outside the room.

“I’m not a _supervillain_ ,” Carlton snaps and the air quotes are audible. “I have a guy picking me up and taking me to Taipei. The whole idea of superheroes and their antagonists is ridiculous, no offense to you.”

“None taken, until that last part. I’m not a superhero.”

Venom emerges from Eddie’s first vertebra to join the conversation.

“ **We’re vigilantes** ,” the symbiote says before Eddie can say anything. “ ** _We_ ** **do whatever we want, and no heroes or villains will stop that**.”

From outside the bathroom, Eddie hears Carlton scoff and it is the most genuine sound he’s heard come from the man so far.

 

2.

“This is completely unnecessary,” states Carlton.

“No, it’s great!” Eddie responds and has to suck his cheeks in to not burst into a completely immature fit of giggling. After three days of having seen Carlton in the same clothes, Eddie had had enough and told him that he needs to change. He’s never seen Carlton sweat and the man is actually fascinatingly scentless, but after a point it’s just a matter of human decency.

It’s also one of the funniest things Eddie’s ever seen.

The two of them are roughly the same height but Carlton is about thirty pounds lighter than him, and the hoodie that Eddie has dressed him in is hanging loose. It hides a great deal of his frame, and combined with the decent amount of stubble on Drake’s face and the expression of bitterness he wears has him looking like a completely different human.

“You look great!” Eddie says in a voice that’s incredibly high to hide the fact he’s about to crack up. “ _And_ casual. Without that goth hipster look–”

“You can’t possibly think that’s what it looks like.”

“–and without that goth hipster look you can go in public and no one’s gonna look at you and go _oh shit,_ is that disgraced billionaire _Carlton Drake_?”

Carlton looks at himself, shoves his hands into the pockets of the hoodie and experiments with his stance. He looks at himself in the very-not fully-body mirror Eddie has and he really _does_ look like a completely different person. Casual, handsome, a little pretty and most importantly like any normal San Francisco inhabitant and not a morally grey philanthropist.

“This is the polar opposite of the plot of _Pretty Woman_ ,” Carlton proclaims loudly while slouching in the mirror, and Eddie can’t keep it together but instead buckles over and cackles.

***

Every once in a while these past three days, Eddie is hit by a moment of clarity when he realizes how fucking bizarre it is he’s housing Carlton Drake. After a day or two of thinking, Eddie thinks he’s figured out that the reason he’s so “okay” with all of this is because for a brief moment on the rocket, he and Carlton and Venom and Riot were all combined into one.

Sure, it was just for a split second, but for a split second it felt like Eddie understood _everything_. How much Venom cared for him, the symbiote clinging onto him and healing him like a wad of molten licorice.

And too, they had both been with Riot and Drake and there was such a _stark_ difference in how the two were fused as compared to Venom and Eddie. None of the wish for intimacy, just hunger for power and what the part of Eddie’s brain that attended college knew to call _folie a deux_.

“Makes me think of how lucky I am to have gotten you and not that silver weirdo,” Eddie says and scratches Venom’s chin, and the symbiote lets out a strangle rumbling that Eddie has come to learn is purring.

**_Yes, you are very lucky. Riot would’ve consumed all of you and give you no chance to prepare._ **

“Were you planning on doing that to me?”

**_Only at first. Then you reminded me of myself. And then you were very pretty._ **

“Oh? I’m pretty by symbiote standards?”

**_Pretty by my standards._ **

Venom then melts against his chest, curling in close and protecting his heart as they fell asleep and both pitied the fact that Riot couldn’t have found the absurd and at times ugly beauty in humanity.

3. 

Carlton takes a great interest in their symbiosis, if silently. He may not say anything but the way he looks at Eddie gently conversing with Venom implies that the bond they have is something unheard of, something new and something incredible. It makes both of them feel a little uneasy, that they’re both breaching such unknown territory.  

The first thing Carlton asks about them is,

“Are you always together? All of the time?”

“Yeah,” Eddie replies simply and Drake’s eyes appear to fog with envy. Eddie wonders how close he and Riot managed to get in the very few days they knew each other. Even without a romantic relationship, or even a somewhat friendly one, the aftermath must’ve been devastating: billions of dollars poured into bringing home a few aliens to “save” humanity, and met with nothing but failure and rejection.

4. 

The fourth evening of housing a wealthy criminal in his house, Eddie’s groceries run out and rather than doing something smart like buying groceries or getting a pizza, he drags all three of them to a nearby McDonald's. He doesn’t _mean_ for it to be another step in Carlton’s opposite-of _-Pretty Woman_ direction, but the way Carlton looks at him implies that’s how the man sees it.

“I still have my credit card. We can go somewhere else,” Carlton says, nestled surprisingly comfortably in Eddie’s couch and his dark eyes looking pained.

“You too good for a bit of fast food, Drake?”

“I’d really prefer not to.”

Carlton still agrees to it, probably in realization that there is no way he’d be able to show up at any finer place he frequents without being recognized, even with a soft scruff and a too large hoodie. Carlton perfectly melts into the crowd the way he looks now, just another 30 year old in San Francisco, and when he walks next to Eddie there isn’t anything besides his very dignified posture making him look out of the ordinary.

“I don’t know what to get,” Carlton admits very, _very_ softly when they’re at the local McDonald’s, which is the first time Eddie thinks he’s ever had more knowledge about something than Carlton.

“You never had fast food before?”

“Of _course_ I have. It’s just been a decade or so.”

Eddie orders them both double cheeseburgers and tells Drake with soft intellect that the trick to getting a fresher burger is making it a special order, asking for extra cheese or no cucumber. Carlton makes a face of soft shock at the fact that one has to ask for a special order to get fresh food.

It is all made that much more hilarious at how clearly Drake ends up enjoying his cheap french fries and ketchup, all while staring at Venom crawling out of Eddie’s sleeve like a little black worm and feeding as well.

 

***

It’s 3:18 AM when Eddie is woken up by Drake looming over him in bed, with his hands neatly clasped together. For some reason, Eddie’s first thought isn’t _I guess this is it_ , and maybe he’s too tired to be afraid and do anything but look up at him and squint.

“What?” he asks in a voice sick with sleep and Carlton is looking at him with his dark deep eyes billowing with soft curiosity.

“Why you?” Drake asks and his tone is hushed. “Nearly eight billion people in the world and it picks you. What’s so special about you?”

“I’ve asked myself that several times,” Eddie admits in a tired grumble. “Several times a day for the last few weeks ‘n I’m still not any wiser.”

Carlton gives an displeased frown and opens his mouth to say something, but before he can there is a slither of black and teeth rising from behind Drake. The mess pounces and Carlton gives a choked gasp as Venom entangles his limbs and seizes him.

“ ** _So_ ** **many questions** ,” snarls the symbiote and Carlton’s dark eyes widen. “ **Constantly asking things and then never accepting the reply you get, never giving straight answers** ,” the symbiote growls right by Carlton’s ear and Eddie snaps awake at the sudden feeling of hearing Carlton Drake’s heartbeat pounding in his ears.

But he isn’t afraid, not whatsoever. Eddie feels his heart racing through one of the tendrils laid around Carlton’s neck, but his eyes are wide in interest to be spoken to directly by one of the very aliens he sought to understand.

“ **Choices and decisions and so much precision, humans never accept the blunt of anything** ,” Venom goes on and Eddie is struck by the realization that Carlton has nearly been dragged into his lap, deep eyes glittering with curiosity and hands clenched.

“And what is the blunt of this?” Carlton asks softly, looking into the symbiote’s eyes of molten nacre and centuries of interstellar knowledge.

“ **This** ,” purrs Venom and Eddie only receives a slight warning thought of **_now_ **before Venom’s tongue slips into Carlton’s mouth in the predatory kiss Eddie has become so familiar with.

Eddie’s first reaction is steadying himself in case he needs to demand for the symbiote to return within him and stop this now, but instead he sees Carlton’s gaze soften as he simply lets the symbiote touch and feel and he _even kisses back_.

Then, and only then, does everything click together in a sort of bizarre puzzle where it _suddenly_ makes sense; everything from fusing on the rocket to Carlton at his doorstep to Carlton staring at him and Venom with envy. It’s like all of it was meant to culminate into this.

Eddie is very awake now, watching the performance of almost mutual worship in front of him with his entire upper body beaming heat as he leans in and kisses Carlton, who kisses Eddie back with more hesitation than he did Venom but eventually leans in close as well.

**Author's Note:**

> i wish i had anything to say after this. there's a post going around implying that eddie has been banned from new york because he tried to take down tony stark. the fic title is from "Take It There" by Massive Attack. all three of them definitely get it on but something i didn't manage to translate well into words is that Carlton is considerably more excited about sleeping with an alien than the sweatiest bitch in San Fransisco


End file.
